84 LETTER FROM ROME T HE climate of er- ratic public vio- lence that culmi- nated, on the afternoon of May 13th, in the shooting of Pope John Paul II is still one that þ- most Italians are not used to. Despite more than a decade of terrorist kill- ing, kidnapping, and kneecap smashing, a ris- ing crime rate, and peri- odic confrontations in the streets between different bands of armed political extremists, the first reac- tion of many people here to the attack on the Pope was incredulity. A typical one was that of a mid- dle-aged man who heard the news as he lounged outside a bar on the Via della Croce, near the Piazza di Spa- gna. "What's happening here? Has everyone gone crazy? They're even going after the Pope now!" he shout- ed. Like most other Romans, he im- mediately looked about for electronic confirmation of the event, and joined a group of silent listeners gathered around the open doors of a parked Fiat sedan in which the driver had turned the radio up to full volume. F or the next couple of hours, the whole city seemed to be holding its breath as the confused, often contra- dictory accounts of the attempted as- sassination and the Pope's medical condition were disseminated by radio and television. In front of St. Peter's, the remnants of the large crowd that had gathered for the pontiff's regular Wednesday-afternoon audience-a few of its members had actually wit- nessed the shooting-lingered, some of them prayerfully, to listen to the Vatican loudspeakers, which contin- ued to broadcast. In two of the city's largest squares, the Piazza N avona and the Piazza del Popolo, political rallies prompted by a forthcoming na- tional referendum were hastily sus- pended, but many of the particIpants chose to remain there rather than re- turn to the privacy of their homes. It was as if at that moment much of Rome preferred to remain outside, where people could quietly discuss the unbelievable event and would not have to face alone the implications of an act that had seemed to most Italians not merely incredible but unthinkable. The dominant sounds of the moment, an incredible piece of news." Signor Amidei . also pointed out that this response to an at- tack on "the most pop- ular, most loved, and most discussed" man in Italy came not only at a time when the country was being asked to vote on a number of difficult issues, including an abor- tion law on which the Pope himself had taken a highly controversial public stand, but also during a period when the nation was riddled with scandal and people were being forced to witness "the long parade of the corrupt, the corrupters, the schemers, the Pharisees, and Pontius Pilates." The Italians, the author concluded, had once again risen above the inadequacy of their social and polit- ical circumstances and the squalor of their historical misfortunes to reëstab- lish in the world's eyes their essential humanity and faith in the common good. Such sentiments not only were fairly typical of the reactions to the shooting itself but expressed very clearly the need of most Italians to believe that they still live in a country free of the sort of irrational acts of violence that afflict less ancient societies, especially ours "Whenever I go to America, I feel I am in a movie about the Wild West," a Milanese businessman once informed me. "At any moment, some- one will step around the corner of a building with a gun in his hand." In Italy, violence has traditionally been much more predictable. Terrorists strike at traditional targets-politi- CIans, judges, policemen, journalists. Riots in the streets often involve groups of fanatics, and, in any case, can be easily bypassed, since most poli t- ical demonstrations are announced in the press a day or two in advance or take place as a result of some well- known public event, like an election rally or a strike; people simply avoid the parts of town where agitations are most likely to occur. Violent crimes are committed for logical reasons, primarily a need for money, or in the course of gang wars between criminal bands competing for territory and markets. Spontaneous violence occurs over questions of passion and sexual =-= -:;: --:- .- -- -- ..... --- ----- ---- ---- ---.....,.....-... - -..-- - - - - - ----=;:==:-.. -- - - ------------ -- -"-- - -;: -=- - i == ? .t.\ \. \ ,. I .,!t' 6, ,I I I ! \\ - _T- - - __- i-Y J'I' t IJ l \ ( I \\ '!Ölt 4 1.: _\ · If!-! \, \. - · - 1 1 . :,:; . t:-- L _ to" I'IJIII ! ..-. = _ 1\, .... -...... ...., ./-z;>..y.: II ' 11111 1111 ífVI. ' II I h I I II -.....)- "ììW. A,"\" I.. 1,1 11 pi ,. 1'1111 1 , I III : I I 1 '1 __ , · ! 1 11: ) 1 I: 1Ìt" , I,:::, ill ;," Im'l l I ' ,:lli II III' 1 :Ii [\ II I I' >",,- \ ! ' j 1 'II ," I..."' - -..;; I g r-,('. r../ , -'.,. 01 -- , / , .... - .øIIII · ,i ' ,', f II 1 , apart from the amplified voices of the broadcasters, were the bleatings of po- lice sirens and, overhead, the whirring of helicopter blades. Only the authori- ties made noise; the familiar, argu- mentative voices of the Romans in their streets were, for once, stilled by the enormity of an ugly historical event. Around dinnertime, when it became clear that Pope John Paul would prob- ably survive his wounds, people began at last to go home. By then, it had also become generally known that the at- tacker was almost certainly a Turkish terrorist-a foreigner, in other words, unacquainted with the laws of a hu- mane and civilized society. "Yester- day's infamous assassination attempt was not, therefore, nurtured by the Italian climate," commented an edito- rial on the front page of Rome's daily II M essaggero the following morning. The writer also observed that the act had nothing in common with the life of the nation or with its institutions but was partially a result of Italy's geographical position, making It a crossroads between East and West. The same day, on the front page of L' Unità, the official organ of Italy's Communist Party, an unsigned com- ment deplored "the extrinsic barbar- ity" that had thrust itself into promi- nence at a particularly delicate mo- ment for the survival of Italian democracy. And a day later, in the highly regarded C orriere Della Sera, of Milan, a writer named G. Barbiel- lini Amidei lauded the Italian people as a whole for having behaved "with- out hysteria, without fear, and with- out hatred when confronted by such